DICE TeamThanks for taking the time to write this detailed post.
I have forwarded your request to see if this is something we are able to investigate further. I will update this thread once I have more information.
Yeah, I'm having low audio issues too. I've got a Samsung Dolby Digital 2.1 CH sound bar including a subwoofer. The audio isn't very "balanced" I guess you can say. Very similar to ubikutz. I gotta up the volume on this game a little to get it to match the volume on the other games I play. Maybe the subwoofer isn't doing much on Need For Speed.
Glad i’m not the only one with this issue :-)
Yes the game sound is overall a bit low compared with other content - not sure why this is happening; it can get quite loud if you turn the volume all the way up, but even with loudness comes comparatively little presence and impact.
Without the enchanced perception that low frequency effects brings to the table, the sound is just agressive and does not seem “full”.
For example, one of the things that caught my attention is with the car engine noise.
When starting the car from a complete halt, there is, during the initial acceleration phase, a bit of subwoofer action which makes the start seems a bit more real.
However, once the car is in motion, the subwoofer stops and does nothing at all.
So basically you’re driving with a sports car with the engine screaming at 8000rpm, yet there is no subwoofer output, hence you feel no vibration, no impact in the game - It feels a bit fake.
There may be many reasons for this - hopefully the tech team will look a bit into this. I’m thinking … :
- maybe it’s related to the downmixing… maybe NFS uses a multichannel 5.1/7.1 audio track in the game engine and when the PS4 downmixes to 2.0 to output via optical it completly drops the .1 LFE channel that contains the low frequency information or it messes the volumes of the individual channels being downmixed
- maybe the original audio resources contain the full spectrum of information, but maybe somewhere during processing / mixing / compressing the low frequency information got lost along the way?
….
Definitely, the volume doesn't seem "full" and impactful as other games. I'm sure it's the subwoofer now, maybe if someone can test it on different outputs and try it on 5.1 ch see how it differs.
